Recently director Ram Gopal Varma has been caught in a controversy regarding his scrapped film with superstar Shahrukh Khan. However Varma has not been too bothered about this and has proceeded to complete the shooting of his film Nishabd, in the quiet solace of South India. Varma has been shooting with one of his favourite actors Amitabh Bachchan. Nishabd is the love story of an older man played by Amitabh and a younger woman played by newcomer Jiah. Jiah is the daughter of actress Rabiya. She was to debut from the Bhatt camp in an Anurag Basu directed film titled Tumsa Nahi Dekha. Unfortunately the actress never got to do the film as she was soon replaced by Dia Mirza. According to sources “Jiah and her mom would make unreasonable demands and throw a lot of tantrums on the sets of Basu’s film and hence she was replaced.” According to Varma he was introduced by a builder to Jiah and he knew immediately, that she had some thing about her which was different. However recently three months ago, Jiah came to meet Varma as she was interested in working with him.

Varma elaborates “While discussing various scripts and stories with Mr. Bachchan, I narrated the script of an older man falling in love with a younger woman; he was excited with the different storyline and was curious to know who would play the female lead. I immediately thought of Jiah as her character fit the role perfectly.” Varma claims that he wanted a fresh face with no existing image so that she would be able to create the required image and also so that Amitabh would be able to relate to her completely.

Even though the storyline seems to be a taboo topic, especially among Indian audiences, Varma says “Older men often do get attracted to and fall in love with younger girls, but because of their position and maturity cannot do anything. In Nishabd the thought is erotic and there is a strong undercurrent of sexuality, but there are definitely no sexually explicit scenes in the film.”

The film also stars Aftab Shivdasani, Revathy and Rukhsar. It is slated to release in September.